Museum of the Souls of Purgatory - Sacro Cuore del Suffragio Church

The Museum of the Souls of Purgatory is an exhibition of documents and testimonies that would prove the existence of Purgatory. The museum is located in the sacristy of the Sacro Cuore del Suffragio Church in Rome.

The church of the Sacred Heart of Suffrage was built in 1890 on land purchased by Don Victor Jouët, a missionary from Marseille who founded the Association of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the suffrage of the souls in Purgatory; on 15 September 1897, a few years after its construction, a fire broke out in the building and a small chapel dedicated to the Virgin of the Rosary was devastated by flames.

Among the traces left by the fire behind the altar, Don Victor Jouët thought he recognized the image of a human face with an unhappy expression. The manifestation led him to believe that the soul of a deceased in pain and condemned to Purgatory wanted to get in touch with the living.

The missionary himself, struck by the event, decided to travel to the rest of Europe to look for documents and testimonies of similar facts. He managed to collect several objects therefore coming not only from Italy, but also from France, Belgium and Germany. The collected material, the oldest of which dates back to 1637, was exhibited in the sacristy of the church and the collection was given the name of the Christian Museum of the Underworld.

The preserved documents show that the dead, having to spend a certain period in the otherworldly kingdom of Purgatory in order to purify themselves of their sins, try to attract the attention of the living to ask them for prayers and masses of suffrage, so that their passage into Paradise.

The collection was increased by the founder with the blessing of Saint Pius X, the latter convinced that the collection was able to recall the faithful to their Christian duties towards the dead. The collection underwent a drastic downsizing years after Victor Jouët's death in 1912.

In 1921, in fact, Father Gilla Vincenzo Gremigni, the then head of the church, wanted to reduce the display of the relics to those that could be considered unquestionably authentic and exhibited with less publicity.

Map: Museum of the Souls of Purgatory - Sacro Cuore del Suffragio Church

vCard Info:

Address: Lungotevere Prati, 12, 00193
Roma (RM) Lazio
Latitude: 41.90422542731467
Longitude: 12.472363114356995
Site: https://purgatorio.altervista....

vCard created by: giulia
Currently owned by: giulia

Type: Building
Function: Museum
Creation date: 15-04-2021 03:46
Last update: 02/08/2023